This is a fascinating discussion. I remember when AM transistor radios
had the little triangles on the dial denoting 640 and 1240, but that's
as far back as my memory goes on the subject.
There is a station in Fayetteville NC (WFNC) on 640 centrally located
amidst several military bases. Does anybody know if this station had
some sort of central role with CONELRAD back in the day?
For that matter, did the heritage AMs currently on 640 or 1240 fulltime
have any history with it?

GTT



Charles Gustafson wrote:
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I'm old enough to remember. At the class 1B clear channel station I
worked at our 10 kw auxiliary transmitter had a bunch of components that
had to be jumpered and/or added. We would test it into the dummy load
after we set it up on 1240. There was a large manual denoting the
changes that had to be made. There was also an area test where we would
get an alert from the Conelrad control point and we would have to set
the aux to 1240 and turn its control over the the control point and then
they would test for a half hour or so. On for 30-60 seconds and off for
3-4 minutes in a random pattern. I think this was the only exception to
the union contract that we could do anything except take meter readings
without a supervisor there. Of course we took about 100 meter readings
and then typed them into the official log every 1/2 hour.

Later at a EBS (what was it now CSPS??-1) main station we had a 35 kw
generator and 1500 gallons of diesel fuel, console, turntable, cart
machines, tape machines and at least 30 days of food at the transmitter
with walls 24 inches thick (8" block, 8" reinforced concrete, 8" block
sealed and air conditioned. We also had two way radios between us and
the State Police and the local County Sheriff/FEMA office. FCC (for
FEMA I believe) came out every so often to check out our EBS readiness.
Even the food and the other ends of the two way radios to be sure the
links worked. Everything was also (supposedly) protected from EMP.

I asked one day how much notice we would have to man the site in the
event of an attack and was told about 15 minutes and I said "Oh good!
It takes me 20 minutes to get there from the studios in an emergency".
The FEMA guy just shook his head and smiled.....